


On the Beaches of Normandy

by PetrichorPerfume



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Big Plans for That Fish, Don't Step on That Fish, Everything Would Have Been Easier if You'd Stepped on the Damn Fish, Far Future, Future Castiel, Future Gabriel, Gen, Post-Apocalypse, no happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-06
Updated: 2014-07-06
Packaged: 2018-02-07 15:34:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1904361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PetrichorPerfume/pseuds/PetrichorPerfume
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Every five hundred million years, they end up here. </p><p>"Don't step on that fish, Castiel. Big plans for that fish." </p><p>Castiel steps on the fish.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On the Beaches of Normandy

He hasn’t been to the beach in five hundred million years. “It’s changed,” he says. He shoves his hands in his pockets. The coat is the same but the vessel is not, because he’s human now, or whatever it was those creatures called themselves in their final days. He’s only alive because of Gabriel’s Grace, because they’re the only ones left on Earth.

 

Humanity is dead, and buried. Buried, because they’d put a cross on the Moon right where the American flag had been that said, _there lies humanity,_ but the Moon had been knocked out of orbit by a rouge asteroid fifty million years ago and now it was in some foreign solar system, a dead tribute to a dead people lightyears from home.

 

They’d torn up the script, but the ending hadn’t changed. The Apocalypse came and went, but there was no Lucifer, no Michael, no grand heavenly battle. Just humanity tripping and falling on its own sword.

 

They’d waited. For a million years, they waited. Hell decayed and eternity came to a blessed end for the tortured souls trapped there. Heaven rotted and Paradise was lost, and the souls there went dormant. Then one by one, the angels left. Some stayed close to home, watching the comings and goings of life in the adjacent star system. Some flew further.

 

Castiel stayed, and so did Gabriel. Another million years passed and Lucifer’s Cage sprung open. For a while, the two archangels that had been trapped within fought across the land. At some point, they realized it wasn’t worth it, not anymore. They’d stuck around for a while, and Gabriel had laughed bitterly and asked them why they couldn’t have figured it out three million years ago, and then Michael and Lucifer went off to find another universe.

 

God had come, had laughed and clapped and informed them that they’d ‘won,’ and then He left without telling anyone what exactly they’d won and what good it did them now, hundreds of thousands of years late.

 

“It’s been five hundred million years,” Gabriel says. “What did you expect?”

 

Castiel swallows and draws a line in the sand with his toe. There is a small green plant sticking out of the water. The Earth is lusher than ever, flowering green plants existing in perfect harmony with insects and bacteria and fungi. There are no animals left, not anymore, but Castiel likes it better this way.

 

“Why did you bring me here?” He asks. He hates this beach. There is ancient blood buried under millions of years of sand, red and putrid and vile and still glowing with the hatred of war.

 

“The same reason we came here the first time.”

 

Castiel opens his eyes just in time to see a small grey fish heave itself out of the water. He looks away.

 

“Don’t step on that fish, Castiel. Big plans for that fish.”

 

Castiel brings his foot down upon the fish with swift and deadly accuracy. “I should have done that the first time you brought you me here,” he says savagely.

 

Gabriel cradles the lifeless fish in his hands and sighs. “Aren’t you the least bit curious to find out where we would have been in another five hundred million years if you’d let him live?”

 

Castiel thinks for a moment. “Perhaps.”

 

“Here,” Gabriel says. “We always end up here, on the beaches of Normandy, watching a small grey fish heave itself out of the water to start a brave new life. It doesn’t matter what we do or don’t do. Every five hundred million years, like clockwork, until the world ends.”

 

“The world already ended.”

 

Gabriel shrugs. “It was kind of cute,” he says of the fish.

 

Castiel spares the dead creature a glance. “It would have grown up to be a monster.”

 

“Don’t we all?”


End file.
